here is the unbelievable story:
my monographical book titled “yeni türkiye / new turkey” was recently published by MASA, istanbul, turkey. i am represented by C.A.M gallery in turkey and my gallery kindly sent my book to several galleries to inquire about possible cooperation and to start a possible dialogue. one of these galleries was laurence miller gallery of new york. they have never bothered responding to my gallery’s e-mail after the reception of the book. one can easily ignore this lack of courtesy, but i got mad when i learned they have gone further in indecency: instead of throwing away the book they were not interested in, they put it on amazon for sale; without me knowing or approving this. i was so lucky to be contacted by the purchaser (that i blurred the name of, in the screen shot below that he sent to me) and this how i learnt about this mishap. they have even used the same posting (text & visuals) that i uploaded personally (check the bottom order entry, where you can see myself as the seller).
my gallery and i were very disappointed to find out that book signed by the artist, i.e. myself, was abused like this. below you can find the photo of the entry page that has my signature on and the photo was kindly sent to me by the purchaser of the book.
this is clearly a violation of intellectual rights and in addition, sale of this book by 3rd parties is illegal since this gallery is not the authorized seller. selling the book without even contacting the artist and making money from this, is quite a “cheap” act; i cannot believe that such a gallery even bothers doing this. i have personally faced such a disrespectful conduct in the art scene for the very first time in my life. below is the web site of the mentioned gallery:
if you have suggestions on the legal measures that i can take, please contact me at muratgermen@gmail.com.
attached are some more “proof” photos that came recently from the purchaser (as of 3 PM istanbul time, 22 february 2014):
murat germen's blog 